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The roads south of Stowmarket make no sense. They wind and dog-leg through
the gentle hills, narrowing, doubling back, and sometimes
disappearing altogether. Beyond Combs, they respond to the history of the land around
them; they reveal the ancient field patterns in the way
they zigzag along and above vanished strips, then turn
abruptly short of the perimeter fence of the former RAF Wattisham. The open fields and secret copses spread for
miles around, and on this bright day in late Autumn my
view was enormous.
Asleep in
the woods - St Mary of Little Finborough
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Also enormous around here are
the churches; great piles built on the spin-off
wealth of the medieval Stour Valley. Here were
the sheep that made the wool, here grew the crops
that fed the workers that made the cloth; here
was the breadbasket that made the Springs and
Cloptons rich. They and
their like built churches that are vast edifices;
think of Combs, and Hitcham, and Hadleigh.
Think even of Lavenham
itself, only a few miles off. These churches are
among England's most significant.
Little Finborough is not one of
them. Instead, the narrowing Combs Road reaches a
woodland, three miles from town. Across a
recently sown field a tiny Hansel and Gretel of a
church peeps through the cedars. There is no
proper road to it.
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You take the driveway to Finborough
Hall, and then turn off through the fields. There are no
other houses. There is no village here; only Battisford, a mile away. The air was silent this day
except for the wind and the birds.
I had not seen a soul since leaving Combs, cycling out of the Gipping valley and then
into the wilderness. Rooks cawed and wheeled out of the
recently ploughed fields. A rabbit shook and shot into a
ditch. And here, in the fields beside the graveyard, a
group of wild deer cropped the early shoots of something
- was it winter wheat? I didn't know enough to tell. They
regarded me warily, fifty yards off, but didn't startle.
I got off of my bike and pushed it through the mud, and
must have seemed a strange beast to them.
The perfect
little Victorianised country church.
The graveyard was an oasis in the
bleakness; hedge- and ditch-surrounded, still verdant
with the dampness of autumn. There are a number of 18th
century graves to the south of the door, and the church
itself is almost completely rebuilt in a sentimental 19th
century manner. The whole thing is delightful.
| There never was a tower. The
west end is entirely rebuilt; before 1856, there
was a half-timbered wall here. The new wall
supports the contemporary bell turret, and the
window tracery is probably all pretty much
original in the rebuilt walls. The door was locked. There were
keyholders listed, but they were parishes away,
and I was on my bike.
I knew that the church
contained nothing of importance, but I was still
disappointed, because I love the atmosphere of
remote Victorianised churches.
I peeped through the misty
windows, and could just make out the coat of arms
above the chancel arch. Once, they were all
there. I believe that this is the last one in
Suffolk surviving in its original place.
I wandered around the
graveyard, exploring.Around on the north side,
there is a little hut on wheels, being used as a
storage shed. Mortlock tells us that it is a 19th
century shepherds hut.
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Somewhat
out of scale: the mausoleum
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As such, it must have once been common
around these parts, although it recalled Thomas Hardy
more to my mind than anything in Suffolk.
To the east of the church is a vast
slab of a mausoleum to the Cross family, once guarded by
iron railings. These were taken down in the Second World
War, supposedly for recycling (although most of the scrap
metal collected during that conflict seems to have been
dumped in the North Sea afterwards) and now it looks an
awesomely terrible thing, quite out of sorts and scale
with this pretty place.
The
utterly charming sanctuary.
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I turned to go, pushing my
bike back to the road - but coming along the
track between the fields I could see a figure,
getting closer. It was an old lady, her headscarf
wrapped against the wind. She was carrying a
bucket of fresh flowers. Now, I'm six foot tall,
weigh fourteen stone and look very fit, so it
never worries me if I meet a stranger in a remote
place; but I was aware that she might not feel
the same way, for exactly the same reasons. So I
put on my best smile, and said hello in as
charming a voice as I could muster. "Oh, hello dear", she said,
without missing a beat. "And what do you
think of our lovely little church?"
I explained that I thought the
outside absolutely charming; but that I had been
unable to see inside.
"Would you like to?"
she asked. "I've got the key in the
car".
And, bless her, she turned
around, and headed back to the main road, leaving
me with the bucket of flowers.
I stood and waited at the edge
of the graveyard, watching the deer, who had gone
back to cropping the shoots after the brief
excitement of our conversation. Suddenly, there
was a burst and a flurry in the bush beside me. A
tiny wren landed, not ten inches from my face.
The kind lady came back with
the key. I expressed my gratitude as she let me
into the south door, and I asked her if she was a
church warden.
"Oh no, dear", she
replied. "There's so few of us here that we
all have our own keys. It's better that
way."
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She knew the little church inside out,
and I was delighted by her tour. She mentioned vicars
that she remembered from the past, and showed me the
plaque on the front bench.
"Now, he was a lovely man",
she said. I looked more closely, and saw that the Vicar
in question had died in 1937.
My friend headed off with her flowers
to the graveyard, leaving me to explore.
Perhaps
the county's last surviving royal arms in situ - and the
tympanum is a rare survival, too.
The almost complete Victorianisation of
this church could not destroy its intense aura of the
past. I knew I was standing in an ancient place, but the
feel of the 19th century, a world just out of reach, came
to me strongly. Wheelwrights and blacksmiths, strong of
arm and strong of voice; ladies in complicated hats, and
young men home from colonial wars...
| This is a tiny church.When
Mortlock came here in the late 1980s, it was
still lit by oil lamps and candles. Now, there is electricity, but the oil
lamps still hang here. The other most striking
feature is a rare plaster tympanum, which once must have supported the rood.
Since 1767, it has supported
the royal arms of George III, which the
Victorians never moved to the back of the church
as they did almost everywhere else.
The font is a simple, 13th century affair, in
use, on and off, for almost 700 years.
The panel on the north wall is
the decalogue from
the now-redundant church of St
Nicholas, Wattisham. At
one time, it sat behind the altar here, but it is
better in its new place. Wattisham once shared a
Vicar with this church, among others.
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Above:
the whitewashed font, and flowers from a funeral.
Left: the Our
Father and other texts, formerly at
Wattisham.
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Vicars are much thinner on the ground
in Suffolk these days, but Little Finborough is lucky
enough to be in a benefice only with busy Combs. This may well prove to be its salvation,
because the balance of traditionalist services here, and
the less formal ones at Combs, provides a kind
of diversity, which may have as many worshippers heading
up into the woods as flooding down to the ford below.
Little
Finborough is signposted from the centre of Stowmarket
through Combs. Just keep going. The church is locked, but
three keyholders are listed - the nearest is in
Battisford.
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